This invention relates to cabinets or storage facilities for keeping medications and prescription drugs for a given patient. The invention is more specifically directed to a locking cabinet to be mounted on the wall of a patient room in a hospital or health care facility, to secure pharmaceuticals for a given patient or group of patients, and to facilitate keeping an audit trail of access to the items stored in the cabinet.
In general, pharmaceuticals are delivered to patients when needed, and this typically involves use of a medications cart containing the prescription medications for all the patients on a given floor of the hospital or health care center. This means that the cart is typically loaded in a pharmacy department and then is brought to the particular hospital floor. The cart is wheeled from room to room to deliver each patient his or her drugs at the time that the nurse or other practitioner is to administer them. The use of a cart has been more convenient and more efficient than obtaining each patient's medications individually. However, the current system of using a cart to transport medications room to room is inefficient and awkward. Typically, the nurse has to push or pull the cart, and the cart, being bulky and heavy (typically 125 pounds) can be unwieldy where the floors are out of level or where there is carpet. The medications cart is large and obtrusive, and takes up valuable space in the hallway and corridors. Administration of drugs from the cart involves bending and stooping to obtain the drugs from lower drawers. If the nurse needs a particular drug for one of her patients when another nurse has the cart for her medication rounds, then the first nurse has to spend time hunting the cart down and often it is difficult to find the cart. Also, when the pharmacy staff comes to the floor to restock the cart, the cart is often in use and difficult to find, resulting in wasted time for the pharmacy staff. Often, the cart does not fit into the patient's room. In addition, the portable cart requires periodic charging of its batteries, and this task is often overlooked and forgotten until a failure occurs.
It is more convenient and better use of the nurse's time and efforts to keep the pharmaceuticals at the patient locations, i.e., in the patient's room or ward, or in the cluster of rooms where the patient is located. These medications need to be secured, that is, kept locked with a key lock or other mechanism, with access limited only to persons in the nursing staff and pharmacy staff. A record of access to the pharmaceuticals needs to be maintained, but this currently requires making pen-and-ink entries on a paper record, or separately keying in information on separate computer work station.
It would be desirable to employ pharmacy cabinet at the patient location in which medications that have been prescribed for a patient can be loaded by pharmacy staff and stored securely until administered to the patient, which will automatically keep track of access to the cabinet, and which can be accessed by the nurse staff electronically (e.g., using a passcode, a barcode reader, RFID device, fingerprint scanner or wireless means). It is also desirable to ensure that the medications cabinet is kept secure, and with means to ensure that its drawers are closed and locked after each use. However, no measure exists, up to the present, to carry this out.
The state of art of a portable medications cart can be seen with reference to Shoenfeld U.S. Pat. No. 6,775,591, in which the medications cart can be either a wheeled cabinet or a stationary hallway device.